


Thirty Feathers of Silver

by kyrilu



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Angst, Biblical References, Character Study, F/M, Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5459828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three things Noma told Alex in the dark and the one thing she hadn’t been telling him. Or: what it means to be made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirty Feathers of Silver

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lizzen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizzen/gifts).



**I.**

Alex had somehow managed to smuggle a little girl into the barracks that night, a frail wide-eyed child who looked more like a ghost. He had given her his bunk and bundled her up in his blanket, quietly telling her that she was safe, she could sleep. Now, he ascends up to Noma’s bunk, climbing to sit next to her.

“Who’s the kid?” Noma says to him, hushed. “Alex, you can’t just bring in a stray girl into the barracks. You’ll get in trouble with Finch. _Again._ We’re technically still in training and he won’t hesitate to wash you out.”

Alex turns and shrugs helplessly. “I found this kid out after curfew during evening patrol. She told me her older brother left to get food but didn’t come back. She was looking for him.”

“Her brother was stealing?”

“Yeah.” Alex looks resigned. “It’s been two days. He’s gone. Happens all the time for us tunnel kids. Sometimes they come back with a missing hand or two, or they don’t come back at all.”

“We’re in Vega,” Noma says, shaking her head. She’s seen a lot of suffering across years, decades, centuries. Even Vega isn’t half-bad when it comes down to it. “I’m sorry, Alex, but you said it yourself. Happens all the time. You’ve got to let that kid go in the morning. If she’s strong, she can make it. You made it, remember?”

Michael had been watching Alex when he was in the tunnels, and there was one day when Noma had stopped by in the Stratosphere, and he’d told her: _He’s the one, Noma. Even without the markings, I know he’s the Chosen One. I taught him how to fight. Gave him a blade. The next morning, I saw him hold his own against anyone who tried to hurt him._

“No!” Alex says, too loud, and quickly lowers his voice. “Look, Nomes, I don’t want to leave her to face the tunnels by herself. I know how it’s like. I can help her. Give her food, water, credits, from time to time. She can’t live here, but...I can help.”

Noma is silent for a while, and then she sighs. “Alright. That makes sense. Just be careful.”

“Careful?”

Noma lightly bumps her elbow against his side. “I know you. You’re a danger magnet. Your childhood in the tunnels. Your illicit sneaking-outside-the-gates adventures. Don’t do anything stupid, like try to steal from V-6s for this girl or, I don’t know, make her board a helicopter to Helena as a stowaway or something.”

“Make her board a helicopter to Helena?” Alex repeats. He cracks a smile and bumps against her in return. “Don’t worry, Nomes. I don’t think I’d like to subject her or me to the wrath of assassins if she’s found out. And besides, stealing from V-6s? That’s Ethan’s area. If I want anything, I’ll trade with him.”

“Good,” Noma says, smiling back. Then she says, “It’s late. We should sleep. We’ve got to get up early in the morning if you want to sneak the kid out.”

Alex lowers himself on the bunk onto his back. Noma reaches over to him, putting a hand on his chest. He brings her hand up, kisses it, and says, “Yeah.”

Noma’s about to close her eyes, but then she remembers: “Hey. By the way, what’s her name?”

“Bixby,” Alex says. He reaches into a pocket and presses a metallic object into Noma’s hands. “She doesn’t remember her parents, but she’s always had this with her in the tunnels. It has her name carved into it.”

Noma runs a finger across it: B-I-X-B-Y. “A harmonica,” she says, surprised. She hasn’t seen many musical instruments around these days, besides glances at Principate Hardwick’s services in the courtyard or while guarding fancy V-6 events.

“She was telling me about it on the way here,” Alex murmurs. “Her brother could play and he taught her. Pretty neat, don’t you think?” He adds, grim, “My dad taught me how to use guns.”

“You can’t say that’s not useful,” Noma says, quietly. She doesn’t want to think about Jeep right now. She had gotten to know him better, of course, when it came to the war and building Vega, but here, this moment, right beside Alex Lannon who has his mother’s hair and eyes...Noma doesn’t want to remember the first day of the Extermination War when she met Jeep Hanson.

She thinks, not for the first time: _Alex would hate me if he knew._ Even as she’s laying down next to him, she knows that this will have to end this soon. She can’t be this close to him and keep so much from him at the same time.

Out loud, Noma says, “I once knew someone who was good with music, a long time ago. He played this horn for announcing things and making songs. He traveled, and he was composing this one song that was meant to represent his journeys. ‘Representing the beginning to the end of the universe’--that’s what he said.”

“Was he traveling with the Camp like you?”

“Something like that,” Noma says, purposefully vague. She had spent most of her time drifting with the nomads in the Camp after the war had ended and Vega had settled into resembling a semi-stable city state.

She pushes away her memories of dusty wagon trains and days of walking in the sun, and makes herself continue her story. “Problem was, he never could find the end of the universe. His song was unfinished and he lost interest in it, eventually. But it was still good song.”

She remembers finding Gabriel at the outskirts of heaven with his wings out and the horn between his lips.

_You’re one of Michael’s lieutenants, aren’t you? And I’ve been seeing you around with Furiad. Come here. My brothers and Raphael don’t care much for music, and Uriel is too strict of a critic because she cares too much. Tell me what you think of this._

It really was a long time ago. She can only remember the opening notes, and she hums those, softly and slowly, into the crook of Alex’s neck.

The beginning of the universe. The creation of heaven and home, then with the notes twisting from there, more disjunct, heralding the angels who were created from the darkness and made for their separate spheres.

“I like it,” Alex whispers. “You should teach Bixby that. See if she can play it on her harmonica.”

Noma nods and hums the fragment of the song again. In this small space of her bunk, she can feel Alex’s breathing slow down at her side, lapsing into sleep. Then she loses herself to sleep, too, Bixby’s harmonica still curled in between her fingers.

 

* * *

 

**II.**

Noma is standing guard in one of House Riesen’s many hallways when the lights go out. It’s pitch black, but with her higher angel’s eyesight, it doesn’t make much of a difference. She tries to radio in to ask what the hell’s going on, but it doesn’t work. All she gets is static on her walkie-talkie.

Something’s wrong. She has to find Alex.

Drawing her gun out, she moves down the hall, trying to remember where Alex was supposed to be standing guard. Then she hears voices in a nearby room - sounds of a struggle - and she stops to figure out what’s going on. The first thing she sees in the room are candles. Candles, near an altar dedicated to the Chosen One, the tiny flames throwing fluttering shadows across the walls. Noma’s been stationed in this room before. It’s where Riesen’s daughter teaches, does her services, and prays.

Claire Riesen stumbles by the doorway with blood splattered on her chest, gasping.

“Lady Riesen,” Noma says urgently. “Are you injured?”

Claire shakes her head. “It’s not my blood. There’s a man--he had a knife--” She cuts herself off, looking stunned.

“ _Shit_ ,” Noma hisses. An assassination attempt on Claire Riesen, and apparently a well-coordinated one at that. She says, “Lady Riesen, you need to get to safety now. Find somewhere to hide. Your father had Archangel Michael give you some basic self-defense training, right? Use it if someone else tries to go after you.”

She blinks, then nods and darts off. Noma knows it’s not exactly protocol to let the general’s daughter fend for herself, but...Noma turns up her usually dormant tracker senses, and she knows that Alex is in there, fighting for his life. There’s another guard in the room, but he’s out of commission, lying unmoving on the ground. Dead.

Noma readies her gun. Alex’s breath is coming out, strained, labored--he’s the source of the blood on Claire Riesen’s dress--and he’s coming to blows with a man dressed head-to-toe in black. The man lunges, pins Alex down, and strikes Alex’s face with his fist.

Noma focuses. She dials up her eyesight, and she shoots. The bullet embeds itself into the attacker’s neck, and he collapses onto Alex with a loud thud.

Alex needs medical attention. After double-checking that the room is still dark, Noma unfurls her wings with her back to the shadows, sending out a distress signal. Michael will be here soon, but this would have been much easier if she could just pick Alex up and fly him to a hospital. This is the consequence of the secrecy they have in place.

Noma catches herself wishing that angel feathers worked on humans.

“Alex!” she calls, running to drop by his side. “Are you alright?”

The would-be assassin is still on top of him. Noma gives Alex a hand in rolling the body off, then she helps Alex sit up. Her hands move to seek out his wound, and he winces when she finds it on his side, her hands now wet with blood.

“I’m fine,” Alex says, but he’s not. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

Noma tears off a strip of her uniform. “Help will be here soon,” she says. “Keep conscious. I’m going to try to stop the bleeding.” She presses the piece of fabric on his wound, applying pressure.

He lets out a shuddering breath. “Nomes,” he says, and he looks like he’s going to pass out.

“ _Alex_ ,” Noma snaps. “Keep awake.”

“Okay, okay,” Alex pants. “Talk to me. Tell me one of your stories from the Camp. Anything.”

It’s been awhile since they’ve been this close when it comes to physical distance. Noma had come back from the desert two months ago. Broke it off without saying anything. It had to happen; Noma had let it run on too long and that was so goddamned _stupid_ of her. Noma misses him, can’t stop missing him, but she knows she has his mother’s blood on her hands and a whole side of her he can’t know.

She thinks: _I held you in my arms when you were one day old, Alex Lannon. I almost killed you._

She wonders if she’ll ever tell him.

Instead, she finds another story.

She begins, “In the Camp, we picked up refugees from all the cities in the Cradle during our yearly crossings. Vega, Helena, New Delphi, or any stragglers who lived outside. They brought their religions with them, and there’s this one story that those from Helena would tell. It actually came from the Bible, if you’d believe that. But the way they told it, it was different.”

This is true. And she’d been there, too, and now she seeds reality with fiction with myth.

She keeps up the pressure on Alex’s wound, her hands flexing against bloodied cloth.

“There was this girl,” Noma says. “A young woman. Her name was Seila.

“Her father was a mercenary. He was an illegitimate son who had been kicked out of his father’s house. He was left out of the inheritance, so he made his living as a soldier of fortune. He raised Selia and cared about her very much--her mother was long gone--but he also had to leave whenever he was hired out.

“Seila was special, you know. Like the Chosen One that’s talked about here. Nothing like those prophesied markings, but there was something about her. She was very connected to nature, and there was a place, a cleft in a hill, where she’d talk to angels. She didn’t know what they were, but they were there to keep an eye on her.”

“Angels,” Alex rasps. “Like eight-balls?”

“No,” Noma says. “More like Michael. Wings and all, although they kept them hidden.”

Noma remembers stepping into the bright clearing with Uriel at her side. Seila had always greeted them with a smile, her dark hair drawn back, her arms reaching out to embrace them.

"And how does the story go next?"

"Seila's father had to lead a war," Noma says, quietly. "The elders of Israel told him if he won against Ammon, he'd be made chieftain. They were the very same elders who had cast him out of his father's house, and Seila's father wanted that chance back. He wanted a new life for himself and his daughter.

"So he left Seila once again. And before he departed with his army, he made a vow before God. If God granted him victory, he'd sacrifice the first thing he laid his eyes on when he came home."

Alex lets out a rattling noise, a sound like a cough. "Damn. I think I know where this is going."

"Yeah," Noma says with a short bark of laughter. "Depressing, right? Seila's father won. Of course he did. First sight he saw when coming home was Seila. She greeted him, playing timbrels."

Alex says, "He killed her."

"After two months,"  Noma says. "She asked her father for more time. Spent the last two months in that cleft in the hill with those angels at her side. Seila had accepted her fate and was ready to go, but she wanted to wait. Dancing, singing, weaving crowns of flowers.

"The way Helena tells it, there was a goddess who gave her blessing to Seila, gave her grace and strength during those two months. The Divine Feminine."

Uriel, her hand on Seila's shoulder, her hair golden in the sunlight.

Noma had wondered what happened to Uriel after Father's disappearance, and it figures that she passed on that story to Helena for some reason, even if it did apparently get twisted. She says, "Helenians don't think it was a true vow before God, because they don't believe in him. They see it only as a misguided vow from a foolish father. But whatever Helenians believe, in the end, Seila went up to the altar. Let her father stab her, and then burn her."

Alex is silent. His breaths are still coming out ragged, but he’s conscious, his eyelids fluttering.

Seila's death was a test, but Noma never knew who the test was for or whether they succeeded or failed. Whether it was for Seila. Seila's father. Uriel. Lucifer, who took the sacrifice through the fire. Raphael, who first foresaw Seila as chosen. Michael and Gabriel, who helped Seila's father triumph over Ammon. Or even for her, but she's never felt like she's mattered when it comes to things like this, not in the overall plan, because all she’ll ever be is an instrument of something greater than herself.

That was always how it was like back then. How it is right now. There may be a prophecy in motion that says that Alex will either save or destroy, but the axis will tip into something inevitable. Even if she knows she will always regret that moment when she had her sword at Alex’s throat when he was an infant.

(She wants him to live. Sometimes she wants this so much that it takes her breath away.)

"Chosen Ones die, Alex Lannon," Noma says in a whisper too soft to be heard, while he's bleeding out beneath her palms. She feels older than she's ever felt before.

Just as warrior angels were made for the sword, Chosen Ones were made for death. Noma promised Alex forever, and she knows that death might well be waiting for her, too.

They've all known this. It’s happened through the ages. The archangels' younger half-brother. Gabriel’s son. Seila. Maybe it’s an irrational fear of Noma’s, maybe it isn’t, but she feels caught between Alex’s potential destinies like a helpless prey in a tangled spiderweb. The only things she can do is snip the threads, pay her debts, and keep to her duty the best she can.

 

* * *

 

**III.**

At the end of the day, Gabriel always locks them in a cell barred with empyrean steel. The cell is down in the underbelly of the aerie, and everything feel stifling. Angels weren’t made to be forced into tight spaces.

Noma lets out a breath. She usually keeps her tracker senses on mute, but now, she loosens her grasp. She lets her senses take over and map out the height and width of the rocky walls and the cold floors, widening her perspective to ease off the sharp edge of claustrophobia. Gabriel is still high in the aerie, up above, eight balls and higher angels surrounding him. Deep within the catacombs, Uriel is nearby, putting a paintbrush across the cavern walls. Noma can feel the minute vibrations of each stroke and whorl and loop.

“Nomes,” Alex says from beside her. She’d told him earlier to keep an eye on her whenever she freezes up like this, and she can feel, acutely, the moment when he extends his hand in the dark. Without looking, she reaches back.

Alex is injured from Gabriel’s tortures from today. Noma mentally traces the shape of his injuries - lashes on his back, deeper than any of Michael’s and carefully done to avoid marring his markings. She and Alex must be a sorry sight right now, both of them bloodied and dirtied and wounded; it’s the same state they’ve been for the last few days.

 _But_ , she thinks, _it could be worse._

She has Alex back like she's always wanted. No matter what she's done...

Noma slips closer to him, pulling herself to curl around his back. Then, she withdraws her wings, settling them around herself and Alex like a cocoon.  Her fingers are still tangled in his, and she can sense Alex’s smile in the dark. It’s better, warmer, a mishmash of limbs and body heat.

Alex holds a palm out to touch one of her wings. “We should have done this more in the corps,” he says lightly. “Cozier than any standard-issue blanket.”

Noma laughs. She pokes back at him with the tip of her wing. “No way. I’d leave feathers all over your bunk.”

“And?” Alex says. “Anyone asks, it was an inexplicable pillow explosion. Fwoosh.” He mimes a bursting gesture with his fist, launching it against her wings.

“My feathers are bigger than any goose or pigeon or whatever kind of bird feather they stuff in pillows, Lannon. Tougher, too.”

“All right, point,” Alex says, shrugging. A pause, and then he says, “Are you okay? With your--?”

“Yeah.”

She puts a lid on her tracker abilities, now that the claustrophobia has slowly become more manageable. It always feels like a weird trick of nature that one of the things she’s been created for can make her so overwhelmed. Twenty-five years ago, she’d turned her senses on full blast to find the Chosen One, and she had felt utterly drained.

“I mostly kept them off in Vega,” Noma says to Alex. She wants to talk, filling up the silence and telling him things she never got to tell him before.“Too crowded. Although Michael sometimes called me with his wings when I was out with the Camp, whenever he lost track of you in the tunnels for too long.”

Alex starts. “Were both of you really watching me for that long?”

“He was,” Noma says. “He didn’t want to chance on me accidentally running into you before you got into the corps. After Jeep left, there was - what, seven years to go until you reached the age of enlistment.”

“Michael told my dad to go,” Alex says. There’s a rough bitterness in his voice. “He had it all planned out, didn’t he? Every little detail of my life. And now he’s gone.”

“Hey,” Noma says, and she nudges him with her wing again. “Michael always has his reasons for everything. He was looking out for you. I also did whatever I could.”

“Why?” Alex asks. He turns his face up to angle towards her. Even with her senses dulled, Noma’s sight is at the usual baseline level for a higher angel and she can see the steady blue of his eyes. He says, “Not Michael, I mean. But you. I wasn’t doing anything Savior-like when you first met me. I was a _kid._ Eighteen years old in Vega’s military and just wanting a home that wasn’t the tunnels. All of those other higher angels in Vega were neutral, but you weren’t.”

“I told you - I made a promise. And look, Alex, stop feeling guilty that Gabriel is a torture-happy asshole,” Noma adds, trying to lighten the mood, and she’s rewarded with a surprised chuckle from Alex. “That’s on Gabriel. Not you. We’re both here now.”

“Mm,” Alex acknowledges. “It still isn’t a picnic, Nomes. I wish we were anywhere but here.”

She wraps her wings tight against him. “Me too.”

“Tell me,” Alex says, sudden. “You were with the Camp. I just found out that you’re a centuries-old? millenia-old? supernatural being who’s probably been to a million places. Where would you go that was anywhere but here? Because my answer won’t be as impressive.”

Noma scoffs at the reference to age. She says, “Tell me what your answer is first, and then I’ll tell you.”

“Easy,” Alex says. “Back at that old house where I lived with my dad. Shooting hoops, gun target practice, and I didn’t have to worry about a V-number label. I wish we could’ve stayed there forever. Maybe if we had, a lot of things would have been different.”

“Alex,” she tells him, “Jeep loved you.”

(“You killed Charlie, didn’t you? Not Gabriel,” Jeep said to Noma, years later, almost conversationally.

Startled, she said, “Michael--”

“Michael never told me,” Jeep said. “But I guessed. You had her blood on your sword.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked, bewildered. “Why do you still trust me?”

“Michael trusts you,”  Jeep replied. “And you fought in the war as fearless as anyone else. You’re not going to hurt Alex.”

Jeep’s last sentence was a statement, but it was delivered like a question.

“No,” Noma said firmly. “I’m not going to hurt Alex.”

“Good,” Jeep says. “That’s the important part.”

Then he’d taken a long, hard look at Noma and said, “One day, that kid will wonder what exactly happened to his mother.  If he asks me--and if he’s old enough--I won’t lie. But if something happens to me...I know Michael will lie. You have to be the one to tell him what happened to his mother, Noma. One day, he needs to know the truth.”)

Noma closes her eyes. Blinks the memory away. She says again, “Jeep loved you, Alex.”

Alex nods, a stiff movement. “How about you, Nomes? Where would you be if you could be anywhere but here?”

“Heaven,” Noma says. “Back when everything was different. When the archangels weren’t being a complicated mess of tragedy, and the rest of us higher angels accompanied them on missions.”

“‘Complicated mess of tragedy?’” Alex quotes, and he starts to shake with mirth.

“Don’t laugh!” Noma says, knocking at him with a wing. “It’s true. We did have a brief period of semi-peace and stability among our ranks. Before that Flood thing with Michael. And Sodom and Gomorrah, and then the David incident. And Uriel and the Cleopatra fiasco. And Raphael pissing everyone off because of Babylon. And, also, Lucifer....alright, fine, it really does sound ridiculous when it’s all been put together like that.”

She caves in and grins; long ago, she would probably think that this would be blasphemous, insolent behavior, but she can’t bring herself to care any more.

Alex smiles up at her. “Okay. More seriously, Nomes, tell me about heaven. How you want it to be.”

“It was like the corps,” Noma says. “But better, because I got to be myself there. You remember that song I hummed to you the night you found Bixby? That was about heaven. The beginning of the universe.”

 

* * *

 

**IV.**

Alex still won’t look at her.

“I made a deal,” she had told him. “It’s--it’s how everything’s meant to be. For you and for me.”

She’s taking him westward. Flying him there with these white wings. Helena is by the coast, and she can already sense the ocean ahead of her. It feels amazing to fly after being grounded so long. She feels _whole_ again.

When they stop to rest at nightfall, Alex finally says, “Noma. What are you doing?”

She stops, and says, “I don’t know. There’s the prophecy. Everything that these archangels have been telling me, different things. I want to do what’s right.”

“Then take me back to Vega,” Alex says, forcefully. “There’s a war going on there. I have to help them fight. And Michael will be looking for me.”

“I’m sorry,” Noma says. “I promised--”

“You promised about me, too,” Alex says. “You said a long time ago that you’ll protect me. I don’t know what this is, but whatever it is, I don’t think it’s going to end well for either of us. Let’s--let’s talk this over. Tell me what the hell’s going on. I’m not going to fight you, Nomes, because we both know you’ll beat me,” and Alex, that idiot, cracks a fleeting smile at that, “--just let me hear you out.”

Noma tries to put together the past and the present in her head.

She has given him her sword, her wings, and forever, and it's only the second one that broke her.

Maybe it has been too high a price. Or maybe it's what she deserves. She is caught up in her own morbid little tragedy like the archangels, service and destiny and sacrifice and betrayal interwoven into her very being for centuries, and she's tired.

Noma thinks, _I've always known where the end of the universe is._

It's the beginning. The path ending back where it started. She can trace it back to heaven with the core of her senses, the trail climbing above the earth and snaking into the depths of the sky.

And she chooses. She closes her eyes. When she opens them, she knows who she is.

Noma sits down on the sandy ground, and she finds Alex’s hand in hers. There’s so many things she has to say. About loyalty, fate, and home. She needs to start somewhere.

She looks at him and says, “Alex. I made a promise to Jeep, once. There’s something I need to tell you.”

**Author's Note:**

> The story that Noma tells Alex in section II is about Jephthah’s daughter from Judges 11-12. I used Jonathan Kirsch’s retelling in his book _The Harlot by the Side of the Road_ as reference/inspiration.
> 
> Noma being a tracker angel comes from [Vaun Wilmott](http://40.media.tumblr.com/50546e029cac409570b758b732738dcc/tumblr_inline_nv8v7oTXMA1rsqpgo_500.png).
> 
> The Cleopatra and Babylon incidents that Noma mentioned in passing are summarized in [this chapter](http://www.syfy.com/dominion/revelations/?chapter=1) of Dominion: Revelations. 
> 
> I owe credit to knucklewhite's fic [A Weapon's Weapon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3839086) for the backstory idea that Noma spent years in the Camp, pre-Archangel Corps.
> 
> Also, I know that Noma said that Finch told her to end things with Alex, but...hmm, I've always wondered if that was true or not. Michael is the head of the Corps and he would have made sure Alex stayed even if a commanding officer was trying to get him kicked out, I think. I've been playing with headcanon interpretations that Michael told Noma to end it or Noma ended it herself, and I stuck with the latter for this fic.


End file.
